Before there could ever be SEO (Search Engine Optimization), there needed to be search engines to optimize for in the first place! After the massive amount of interest shown in my "How It Works: What Happens When You Search Google" post, I felt the following documentary would be a great segue into learning the historicity of Internet search and Google -- thus, taking the "how Google works" concept one step further (and backward).

For someone like me who has been around since the advent of the Internet, I didn't really start getting into the inner-workings of it until 9-10 years ago. Because of that, documentaries like this are really great for catching up on everything I missed prior to when I really became interested. Not to mention, it also helps to put a lot of things into perspective (i.e. just how far the Internet has come along in such a short period of time). Although Google ends up as the primary focus of the documentary, it is very thorough in the history of search overall and how Google really wasn't just another search engine (and how the then-owners of Excite are probably still slapping themselves today for giving up the opportunity to buy Google's technology for around $1,000,000 back then).

The following documentary is 45-minutes long and has been split into 3 15-minute clips to comply with YouTube's rules. Additionally, I have separated the three clips onto 3 individual pages for the sake of page load time. Clip one discusses the roots of search and how Yahoo claimed its place as a search behemoth early on. Clip two begins to dive into Google, their early methods of search, and how they made the shift from obscurity to popularity. Lastly in clip three, we learn about how Google became the ridiculously wealthy entity that it is today thanks to integrating paid ads into search results. Pay close attention as you watch these, because there is absolutely a lot of great content to glean valuable information from!

The History of Internet Search and Google, Part 1

The History of Internet Search and Google, Part 2

The History of Internet Search and Google, Part 3

I hope you enjoyed watching this documentary as much as I did! Please pass this along to people you know who may be interested. As for you, was there anything you didn't see in this documentary that you would have liked to have seen? Alternately, did you learn quite a bit and are now eager to go search Google with a new-found sense of understanding? Let me know your thoughts! :)